The Chimera Project
In Greek mythology, a chimera is usually depicted as a fire breathing conjoining of a lion, a goat and a serpent. In real life, a chimera is simply an organism that has more than one set of DNA. In fact, science has made several; glowing mice with jellyfish genes, cabbages with scorpion venom and goats that can produce spider silk. My name is Michael Williams, and since the beginning of my career in medical biology, I have been fascinated with chimeras and how the DNA of other animals could be used for human benefit, and for the past 2 years, I have been working on just that thing. I have developed a retrovirus that contains certain genes from various animals, these being a Naked Mole Rat, a crocodile, and a Lobster. Naked mole rats are resistant to cancer, crocodiles are immune to HIV and lobsters can live for a very long time. The virus, when entered the body, will insert the genetic information into the DNA of the cells. This, in turn, should theoretically give the host the immune system capabilities of these animals and therefore give them the ability to resist the diseases as mentioned. I have already tested this virus on mice with some healthy results, the next step is human subjects. Call me crazy all you want, but after 2 years of development I want to find out if it truly works as quickly as I can; I’m going to test it on myself. I know that there may be negative consequences to this, and I am fully willing to face them. My notes will be left behind so if anything happens to me someone else can continue my work should I die from this. I’m going to continue to document my progress in the coming weeks, and hopefully the end results will be good. Day 1 It has been approximately 24 hours since I injected the retrovirus. Nothing noteworthy in terms of side effects have occurred. It may take a while before any kind of change occurs; I mean I'm altering my DNA here, it’s hardly changing a lightbulb. Day 2 This morning I woke up feeling incredibly energetic, in fact, I can’t remember the last time I felt so motivated. I decided to go for a run before breakfast, which bear in mind is something I haven’t had time for months, and yet I was able to keep going for a full 30 minutes before I started feeling fatigued to the point of exhaustion. It’s possible that the retrovirus has aided in boosting my metabolism as well as my immune system, although there’s currently no proof of the latter thus far. Day 3 Once again I woke up with a lot of energy; I think my metabolism has definitely been affected. Further proof to this is the fact that I am starting to feel hungry a lot more than usual so I’m probably burning calories faster than I was previously. Looks like I can’t be skipping meals anymore. Day 5 Nothing much has changed, though the increased hunger doesn’t seem to have gone away. If this has become my default metabolic rate then I may have to start eating more than what I’m used to in order to get sufficient nutrients. I decided to drive to the lab and draw some blood to look at it under the electron microscope, and there are definitely some changes. I’ll spare you the details for now, my notes will cover that, but let’s just say that it shows the signs of a highly efficient immune system, which means its working. Day 7 It has now been exactly a week since I injected the retrovirus and nothing much has changed since day 5. I’ve managed to increase my food intake to a point where I’m no longer hungry all the time. Now that the side effects seem to have reached their optimum, I’m going to take a gigantic risk; I’m going to inject myself with the AIDS virus. I know that this sounds absolutely mad, and maybe I am to some degree, but I had this tested on the mice. When I checked their blood 24 hours later the virus had completely gone. I have full confidence that this will work, and if it doesn’t, then I’ll just have to face the consequences. Day 9 Ok, maybe this was a mistake. I had a pretty bad night sweat last night in addition to having developed mouth ulcers and a pretty nasty rash. My energy also seems to have decreased substantially, all symptoms of HIV. I checked my blood under the microscope, and it’s still there. So much for my confidence; looks like I might have to spend the rest of my life dealing with this shit. Well, it was fun while it lasted. Nice going Michael! Day 10 I take back everything I said yesterday, I should have waited longer before I jumped to conclusions. When I woke up this morning, all of my symptoms were completely gone. I checked my blood again and it’s almost as if it’s someone else’s, the virus has disappeared. I can’t believe I’ve done it; I’ve created a cure for HIV and potentially even cancer! This is an incredible breakthrough and is possibly going to help so many people. Day 14 Well I woke up this morning to discover I had been robbed. Thankfully they didn’t take anything too valuable but my fridge was wide open and all the contents has been removed with the packaging scattered all over the floor. Though I am curious as to how they got in; there doesn’t seem to be any sign of a break in anywhere. But I digress. As for me nothing much has changed. I did wake up with a few sore muscles but that’s probably from all the exercise I’ve been doing recently thanks to my energy boost. I notified my team before the experiment that if after 2 weeks the results were all positive, I would give them the green light to send off the retrovirus in order to have it tested on further subjects before submitting it for medical use. We first need to make sure that it’s going to work on people other than me and those with issues other than HIV and AIDS. Since it has been 2 weeks and it seems to have been a success, I did just that. I can sense that great things will come of this! Day 16 Something concerning happened today. I was driving home from the supermarket after grocery shopping to refill my fridge after the incident the other night, when I suddenly felt a tight pain in my chest. I thought I was having a heart attack, but the pain started to spread all over my body until I could barely move. The next thing I knew I was on a stretcher outside my wrecked car that had crashed into a tree being rolled into an ambulance. According to the paramedics the witness told them that my car just seemed to spiral out of control after seeming to drive fine. I told them about my blackout and they offered to do some tests to discover what had happened, but I informed them of who I was and that the changes that I had gone through would probably render any medical help useless. Luckily in terms of the crash I managed to get out with very few injuries, just a slight head bump. They let me go that day. One thing that I did neglect to mention, however, was that when I came to my clothes seemed to be slightly torn. It was as if they had ripped because I was too big to fit in them. In addition to this I was feeling sore again, even more so than before. I rationalised that the clothes were torn during the accident, and that the blackout and soreness were a late side effect from the retrovirus. This would make sense as my body has undergone quite a large change over the past 2 weeks. I made sure to notify the team of these potential effects so that they could let those who volunteered as test subjects know so that they knew what they were getting into. With any luck I’ll be a minority in those who experience these effects. Day 19 I am seriously freaked. Last night I was just about to get into bed when I started to feel another chest pain. Once again I blacked out, and when I came to it was morning. Not only that, but I was laying in my yard completely naked and my body was in agony. It took a while for my vision to become clear, but once I managed to stand up, my eyes were assaulted with a horrific sight. The fence that separated my yard from my neighbour’ had a gigantic whole through it, like something from my side had just torn through it. Almost all of the vegetation had been uprooted and ripped up. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The neighbour’s dog that always slept in the kennel at night had been completely torn apart. You could barely tell that it was a dog anymore, with the only recognisable feature being the snout, and even then the bottom half was completely gone. The rest of the body was a complete bloody mess; the torso had been completely devoured and parts of the skeleton were scattered all over the place, but even they had been partly eaten. I ran inside, upstairs into the bathroom and threw up. I know that I work in medicine and should be able to stomach this, but seeing something like this was just too much to bear. And then I saw it. I saw what made me realise that this whole experiment was a complete mistake after all. In the pool of vomit I had made in the toilet were several canine teeth still lodged in the gums. In that moment it clicked; I had done this. I vomited again and jumped into the shower, trying to wash off the filth that I felt, but of course this wouldn’t work. I had killed something in the most gruesome way possible. I couldn’t begin to fathom the pain and fear that poor dog must have felt. I should have waited longer. Why didn’t I wait longer?! The mice died shortly after the effects of the retrovirus had shown by natural causes, I should have waited. I should have anticipated that splicing animal genes with humans could lead to further mutation, and of course that would take more than two weeks to show- Oh God… The test subjects! I can’t let anyone else go through this. I need to call the team, there’s still time, I don’t think they’ve found any volunteers yet. I need to end this now! Day 24 Remember how I said that I was fully willing to accept the consequences of this experiment? It was a complete lie. The reason I haven’t updated recently was because I was physically unable to. As soon as I finished typing my last entry, I called the team. I was just about to warn them not to give the retrovirus to anyone else but before I could say anything my voice completely broke. I could not make a sound. What’s more was that I could hardly breathe. And that’s when I felt it again. The pain in my chest, growing and growing. I dropped the phone. I knew what was coming, and I tried so hard to resist it, I kept telling myself who I was but all it did was stop me from blacking out during the transformation. The pain in my arm suddenly intensified like someone had just smashed it with a giant hammer. My fingers and thumb seemed to be forcing themselves whilst still stretched out, kind of like a cramp only 10x more painful. Then they started to merge together and start stretching out all whilst the skin on the back of my hand became hard and dark which began spreading up my arm. I tried to scream but my voice was still paralysed. It was at this moment, whilst I could feel my body growing and contorting that I realised all of my organs had shut down to allow the mutation to take place. My vision blurred as I heard the sound of all of my bones cracking at once, my front half in front of what was once my arms was getting longer. Clothes tore open as they could no longer contain the size I was getting to. I felt something coming out of the sides of the top of my chest; slowly and agonizingly, two new limbs were growing. The feeling of what was once in my arms was now in these appendages. With all of my might I scrambled across the floor and into the bathroom, now barely fitting through the door. Once I was inside the pain started to dull. I could breathe again. I slowly lifted my head up. The width of my new body hardly fitted inside the bathroom. Once I had fully risen up, I saw myself in the mirror. The creature that was looking back at me was one of the most horrific things I have ever seen. The thing had four legs; each a black exoskeleton that spread outwards with what looked like a giant downward facing spike for a foot. The body had somewhat of a hunch, with dark green crocodile scales on its back and wrinkly, slightly lighter green skin on its underbelly to its neck. It had a long tail that curled around so that it could fit in the room, and at the front were two black exoskeleton arms that looked somewhat human arm shaped until you saw the long pincers. But the most horrifying part of this creature was its face. The face was covered in scales, with small traces of hair on its head that were messy and all over the place. The nose was thicker and spread down to the top half of the mouth, which was filled with razor sharp teeth, with the two top incisors extended yet still sharp. But the eyes were still human, and that was the hardest part. It was the realization that this creature, a monstrosity so horrific that I was offended that it was allowed to exist, was me. I cried. I cried hard, the sound coming out of my mouth not even resembling a human voice. How could I do this to myself? Then came the intense hunger. I blacked out. When I woke up, I was once again naked just outside my door. After the drowsiness wore off, I bolted upstairs and turned on my laptop. I was mortified when I saw the date; I had been out for a full 5 days in the chimera form. I opened internet explorer to find the local news. I prayed that nothing had come of this, that maybe I had just attacked a few animals in the woods at most. But that wasn’t the case. Over those 5 days there had been reports of ‘An Unknown Creature’ going on a rampage throughout the area. Hikers had been ripped apart, livestock had been eaten, and people had even had their vehicles torn up when it had been trying to get at them. It had attacked people in the woods, the park, farms and some had even reported it in the streets. In that time more than 15 people had been reported dead and 13 missing. What horrified me the most was the fact that 8 of those people put together were children, some not even older than 5 years old. I broke down and did not stop. I could not believe the monster I had become. This wasn’t supposed to happen. All I wanted to do was create something that could help people. This was meant to extend lives, but it had done the complete opposite. Still tearful, I put on some clothes, packed my laptop and my notes, and headed out. I ran as fast as I could. I needed to get away from civilization so that I could harm as few people as possible. I charged into the woods and did not stop running. I never know when a transformation will occur or how long it will last for, so I need to make sure that I am completely isolated when it next happens. I fear that I will never be able to interact with another human again. I don’t know how long I have, but I’ve managed to get into what seems to be a secluded area of the woods. I’m hoping that this is far enough out but I can’t be sure if anyone will come out this far. I think I’m going to attempt suicide at some point soon. Don’t try to convince me otherwise, it’s the only way to protect others. But I don’t even know if it will le- My chest is starting to hurt. Do not let the retrovibrus get out. Whoever is rreading this has to do someting. I hope to God no test subjects have been found yet. but if this gets out it could mean the end of everything, the cchimera consuumes everything that gets in their way, nothing will calm it down. Everything hurrts so much. Cant type. You have to kill iit. Don’t wirry about me, I’m alreaaxdy dead as far as I’m concerned. I can seee hikers. I have to go. I need geet awayyy. I need I need I need I need…food… Category:Diary/Journal Category:Science